If Maya Lotz is going to be perfectly honest, in the beginning, this was particularly boring.
“Nobody really wanted to do it,” Maya says of that first day that she and her fellow Scouts volunteered to pick up garbage on the beach.
While there were countless kinds of litter to pick up on the beach, there was just one way to describe them all — “gross.”
“There was a squishy tomato,” Maya says. “[And] sticky stuff on some of the garbage.”
But Maya stuck with it, because the 11-year-old excels at turning bad situations into good ones.
“She’s really willing to step outside her comfort zone,” Scout leader Doug Gorley says. “And it helps elevate other kids in our group as well.”
When she’s not cleaning local beaches, Maya is spending hundreds of volunteer hours with Scouts and the Navy League to plant trees to support the environment and sell poppies to support veterans. Plus, she fosters kittens in her bedroom to support the local Humane Society.
“It’s really adorable to see them run around,” Maya says. She also administers medicine to the sick kittens and cleans the litter box for all of them. “But sometimes it’s a lot of work.”
And other times her volunteer work is fun from beginning to end. Like when she bought toys to fill Christmas care packages for kids in need.
“That altruism and that leadership is something that I think we should support,” Doug says.
And Maya thinks, if we can support each other in making our community better, what might seem like a boring chore at the start just might feel like winning a championship by the end.
“It’s motivating to see the change every step you take,” Maya says as she fills her bag full of trash from the beach. “Behind you there’s no more garbage.”
And that’s why, when Maya looks ahead at her life, she’s committed to keep making the community more clean and more caring in whatever way she can.
“If you keep on trying,” Maya smiles, “it will make a big difference in the world.”
